Love Me Tender
by BowTies
Summary: "You know..." Bob murmured, his voice husky and soft, a warm tickle in her ear. "You always looked so damn hot in red, went with your hair."


1

Love Me Tender

Summery : Helen through the years.

Authors Note : An idea I couldn't itch, until now.

The Incredible's don't belong to me! And thanks to Elvis for letting me borrow this song :)

_Love me tender_

_Love me true_

_All my dreams fulfilled_

_For my darlin' I love you,_

_And I always will_

Helen was never like most girls her age.

_Aw honey. _

Twelve had been such an awkward age.

Her mother tried to understand, and cope, consol her daughter, using words like _special_, and _unique_, when she woke in the mornings before school, passing orange juice along the counter with a plate of burnt white toast and peanut butter.

_Extraordinary_

_Ethereal_

_Effervescent_

Her mother became a compendium of words, and meanings, a thesaurus bookworm with a penance for crossword puzzles and scrabble, and final Jeopardy, with the pencil she tucked in her hair, brandy dark coils Helen would never inherit and always envy.

Helen had inherited more then just her father's Irish red.

She never hit puberty like her classmates, cliques that would giggle in the bathrooms at lunch, whisper in dulcet tones about periods and boys, and smokes they stole from their mothers, and sex, and stare at Helen when she slipped from the stall, head down, a rip the shoulder of the new red sweater she had torn at breakfast that morning.

Torn reaching for the sugar dish, her mind a million miles away, nose deep in a library book about a brave boy hero, when her arm was suddenly clear across the kitchen as her mother screamed, and a vase of white daisy's hit the floor, shattering as water pooled over yellow linoleum.

Her mother only cursed in Italian when she was mad.

Thirteen, fourteen, sixteen and her lip caught between her teeth, standing before her mothers full length bedroom mirror after school, the white carpet flooded with sunlight as she stared at the pale length of her body, a white towel clutched in her hands, her red hair damp against the back of her neck.

Stretch marks across her thighs, the curve of her belly, the undersides of her arms, line drawings in flesh she could trace with a finger.

Marks like a road map of her adolescence that she tried to remedy with creams and lotions, late night infomercial products, doctors and specialists, and the men in grey suits who had cornered her in the park on the way home from school.

_We can help Miss. _

Helen would always remember the taller of the two, standing stiff in his black tie under a blazing mid west sun, a damp curl of brown hair moist against his forehead, his compatriot arguing with her mother in the kitchen, holding dutifully to a glass of powdered lemon aid, the clink of ice cubes and the curl of his tongue, pink and wet against his thin lips, teeth white in sun darkened skin.

Humming _Love me tender_ as he pressed a small card into her palm on his way out, the dry pads of his fingers brushing against her wrist when he bent his head close to her ear and exhaled, sending a shiver down her spine.

_Call us, if you need us. _

Her mother had been furious.

_You won't make a monkey out of my daughter_, she had snarled, white lips curled back.

Helen was moody, dexterous, and seventeen, her efforts condemned as futile, and self prescribed long sleeved shirts and sweaters, blue jeans and runners, packing away her skirts and bathing suits, the white summer dress her mother had bought and she refused to wear, packed into a black plastic garbage bag, and set on the curb.

Helen figured she had never been all that fond of swimming anyways.

Her senior year and the first boy Helen ever kissed was Jimmy Jones, he said she looked cute in flannel, in torn jeans and her mothers old bangles, tarnished silver bracelets she had worn as a teenager. He was a tall drink of ice tea, as popular as she had been naive, learning that humiliation and rejection tasted bitter like sweet cherry cola with a twist of lime.

Jimmy was _double dog dared_, and Helen would never tell her mother, exhilarated, confused, palms flat against white subway tiles in the girls bathroom on the second floor, between the janitors closet and History 12, mortified by the curl of want in the pit of her gut when she flinched, felt his fingers in her hair, against her jaw, his mouth wet against hers.

Moving became chronic, five times in one year, like her mothers frown, trying not to see Jimmy's revulsion reflected on the lips of strange boys.

_I only want to keep you safe_, her mother had said, and her disappointment weighed heavier then the expression Jimmy had worn when she told him recklessly, that she was special.

Some lessons you learned the hard way.

And then Helen met Bob.

Bob was strong, handsome, captain of the football team, the wrestling team, and voted the most popular bachelor for the third consecutive time by the year book comity.

Before Helen of course.

Helen in her long sleeved shirts and defiance she wore like a mantel, clinging to her books, and her poetry, and the drama club (which she told her mother were study sessions) on Tuesday afternoons where she would run into Bob after football practice. Then again on Thursdays after wrestling when he stayed late, and lingered on purpose.

Bob would take his time and tie his shoes real slow.

Helen would turn up for matches at the last minute, and Bob would sometimes sneak in after Act 1 of the senior production of Romeo and Juliet, and make faces from the back of the crowd.

Her mother got a steady job as a waitress, serving banana cream pie and coffee at a diner twenty minutes from the small ground floor apartment they shared. Four months later and she got a raise, a kiss on the cheek from her boss, a forty something with a baby blue 1940's convertible and a dog named Bentley.

She wanted to get Helen the red dress with a white sash for prom.

Helen told her mother about Bob.

Bob who spun fables of men in red capes and this idea of heroism Helen couldn't seem to want to escape.

It kindled like confidence and Bob on quiet Sunday afternoons, while her mother was at work and sunlight warmed the brown carpet as she lay on her stomach, head pillowed in her arms as he traced pale lines across the small of her back with his finger.

She thought the stretch marks seemed fainter, staring at her thighs in the bathroom mirror, and wondered when it was that she had stopped giving a damn.

They made out in his fathers car after prom, after her eighteenth birthday, twenty, twenty one, and they had been steady highschool sweethearts, he would stay for dinner and her mother would make lasagna and bake chocolate cake, singing _Love me tender_ under her breath.

Helen wanted to tell Bob all of her secrets.

She had control now, she was conscious of the way her body could move, of her mother's fears, of the stack of used cardboard in the hall closet and the rolls of clear packing tape, the suit case she kept shoved under the bed, just in case.

Old habits were hard to break.

Bob beat her to the chase.

Bob said he was special too, that he understood all about secrets.

He kissed her, his lips soft, warm, and she didn't think once of Jimmy as he lifted his car into the air in the parking lot behind the Discount Dollar Giant, a quarter past one on a Tuesday night.

Bob said that he loved her

He told her about Edna, his mouth against her ear, like the man in the grey suit as he pressed a small card into the palm of her hand when he said, _trust me Helen, we're not alone in this. _

He told that he chased bank robbers and purse snatchers, that he saved children from burning buildings and cats from tree's, and then he asked her mother for permission to marry her only daughter.

Helen's mother cried, and then Helen cried too, because she couldn't remember the last time she had ever seen her mother shed tears.

Twenty five, twenty six, thirty, and she wanted to name her daughter Violet, and thought of her mother buried next to her father, her head pillowed in Bob's lap, his hand on the curve of her belly as they watched the evening news.

Helen didn't play super hero anymore, she played house wife, and kept cardboard boxes in the hall closet, she poured coffee and served cherry pie at diners while Bob worked week days at a financial firm, and played super hero with his old friend Max on weekends.

Sometimes Helen could still smell spandex like a new car.

"You know..." Bob murmured, his voice husky and soft, a warm tickle in her ear. "You always looked so damn hot in red, went with your hair."

Helen smiled into her hand.

_When at last my dreams come true_

_Darling this I know_

_Happiness will follow you_

_Everywhere you go_


End file.
